Allied Health Sciences faculty receives interprofessional innovation grant

Early detection and intervention in child development are critical, but many training programs focus more on older children. This results in students in health professions often lacking structured, hands-on opportunities to observe and interact with infants under age 2 before clinical placements.

Afua Agyapong, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Speech-Language Pathology in Augusta University’s College of Allied Health Sciences, conceived the idea of a baby lab, which was designed to give students early childhood observation opportunities that are often difficult to access.

Agyapong partnered with co-investigators Ryan Carrick, PhD, Mallory Rosche and Beth Willson from the Department of Occupational Therapy and Dustin Cox, PhD, and Gregory Edwards, PhD, from the Department of Physical Therapy to design an interprofessional learning experience.

For their efforts, the Association of Schools Advancing Health Professions announced that AU and Agyapong were recipients of the 2025 Interprofessional Innovation Grant Program.

“I am incredibly proud of the SLP team’s intentional collaboration with our sister programs in OT and PT to create innovative, high-impact learning experiences that best prepare our allied health students to serve patients across the lifespan,” said SLP Program Director Joann Denemark, PhD.

“We developed the project proposal, ensuring it aligned with ASAHP goals in workforce readiness, simulation and interprofessional education,” Agyapong said. “We outlined the structure for families with infants ages 3-18 months that would participate in guided sessions within a simulated home-like setting. We created assessment tools, including reflective journals, observation checklists and collaboration rubrics.”

They created a timeline for recruitment, pilot testing, implementation and dissemination, and the process took approximately three months from inception.

Agyapong said the baby lab bridges the gap by allowing students to connect developmental theory with real-life, caregiver-child interactions in a supportive, educational setting. It also provides rare, structured exposure to prelinguistic, motor, feeding and early social-communication skills.

“Seeing students experience those ‘lightbulb moments’ as they connect theory to practice in real time. Watching interdisciplinary teams learn from one another while engaging with infants and families and building long-term partnerships with the community that support families while preparing a stronger pediatric workforce.”

Afua Agyapong, PhD, regarding what she’s looking forward to with the project

SLP students will gain insight into feeding, early communication and caregiver interaction. OT students will focus on fine motor, sensory regulation and daily routines. PT students will observe postural control, reflexes and gross motor milestones.

“It enhances the students’ ability to recognize developmental milestones and red flags earlier and builds clinical confidence in working with families and caregivers in naturalistic contexts,” Agyapong said.

“We are pleased to receive this award from ASAHP,” said Chandramohan Wakade, associate dean of Research for CAHS. “Dr. Agyapong has put together a simple and elegant interprofessional research proposal with SLP, OT and PT faculty and student learning outcomes. This multi-faceted wellness baby lab will address comprehensive pediatric care and provide invaluable interprofessional education to our students.”

Agyapong said the goal of the baby lab during the pilot phase was to establish a functional interprofessional lab model, recruit families and run pilot sessions and assess student learning outcomes and refine tools.

The long-term goal is to integrate it into the Simulated Patients for Education, Assessment, & Research, also known as SPEAR, for sustainability while securing external funding to expand training and access and positioning the baby lab as a model for interprofessional pediatric education nationally.

Agyapong is looking forward to what this project will do for everyone involved.

“Seeing students experience those ‘lightbulb moments’ as they connect theory to practice in real time,” she said. “Watching interdisciplinary teams learn from one another while engaging with infants and families and building long-term partnerships with the community that support families while preparing a stronger pediatric workforce.”